dangerous copyright

What I have noticed from my experience is that when students need an image for any project or presentation in class, they go straight to Google. I did it myself in high school and college classes, searching for an image, copying the first one I liked, pasting it into my project, and not even thinking once about whether I might be doing something illegal. Teachers did not even suggest that all those images were under copyright and students all fell into the same assumption that there were no restrictions on taking whatever we wanted off the internet. Since student projects do not often create large commercial or social waves, ignoring copyright law did not become a significant issue. However, in my classroom I hope students will create projects that are not only extensive and professionally done but also are related to events in our world, country, or community. This means that their projects may be more visible to the world outside of our classroom and that is where copyright issues could arise. As teachers we are responsible for what students do in our classes and therefore someone discovering an improper use of copyrighted material by one of our students could be disastrous. To combat this, I will definitely show students how to search for creative commons licensed material and use and reference it correctly. I'm glad we learned about this possible issue and a simple, legal way to get around it. I would not want to end up here simply due to ignorance:

Original Image: "jail"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/guillermo_solar/493353121/sizes/s/in/photostream/
by: the_kid_cl

Released under an Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/